In addition to Eisenhower identifying the military-industrial complex, we now have the police-industrial complex, the medical-industrial complex, the surveillance-industrial complex, and the media-industrial complex.
Altogether there are about 22 million government busybodies meddling in the lives of Americans.
Paul O’Neill, Bush’s first secretary of the treasury, revealed that at the very first National Security Council meeting the subject of attacking Iraq was on the agenda for discussion. O’Neill lasted in the administration until December of 2002 when he was fired for disagreeing with Bush on the Iraq War and for expressing the danger of the large deficits.
The Bush Doctrine was created to justify ongoing and future interventions on the basis of America’s “moral” responsibility since becoming the only superpower left standing. More succinctly, the Bush Doctrine is about pursuing a world empire.
This Bush Doctrine stands today and is assumed by President Obama to be legitimate as he carries out a secret drone war worldwide with no congressional input or oversight.
It stretches credulity to try to explain away our inconsistencies in working with al-Qaeda in Egypt, Libya, and Syria while being diligently at war with the same group. Pursuing these contradictory policies makes no sense.
While I oppose most gun control proposals, there is one group of Americans I do believe should be disarmed: federal agents.
Even today, authors who claim correctly, as Patrick Buchanan does in his book Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, that both World War I and World War II were “unnecessary wars” are shunned and ridiculed. Such a suggestion is so at odds with how history is taught in most US schools that many people are unwilling to even consider arguments backing Buchanan’s conclusion.
The Bush Doctrine defends the US killing a supposed enemy 6,000 miles away who has never attacked and cannot attack America. Those who struggle and sacrifice to expel foreign invaders from their homeland are the monsters that must be stopped according to the logic of Presidents Bush and Obama, who take their cues from the neoconservatives.
No time back then or since has there been much discussion of the significance of Roosevelt’s executive order on July 26, 1941 that froze all Japanese assets in the US. This occurred four months before Pearl Harbor. It essentially created an oil embargo on the Japanese. Such sanctions are a deeply flawed policy that we continue to use today, to our detriment.
Today both the Democratic and Republican parties support the expansive US Empire as well as the neoconservatives’ agitation for a perpetual Global War on Terror. The disagreement we hear between the two parties is only regarding management style and is designed to use political failures and unintended consequences to enhance the power and influence of one party relative to the other.
Obama, through Attorney General Eric Holder, rejuvenated the Espionage Act, using it more than any president since Wilson. On seven occasions the Obama administration has used the Espionage Act to charge government officials for leaks to the media. It has also used the law to justify seizing emails and phone records of Associated Press and Fox News reporters.
The majority of the American people opposed military action against Syria in the latter half of 2013. Still, there is much tolerance of our constant smaller wars as many people just pretend the wars don’t exist. There’s no real endorsement, but also no real objection.
To decrease the frequency and magnitude of war, those who are conditioned to die in them or pay for them are the ones who must decide they will neither support the wars nor be victimized by them.
The woman was probably six months along in her pregnancy, and the child she was carrying weighed over two pounds. At that time doctors were not especially sophisticated, for lack of a better term, when it came to killing the baby prior to delivery, so they went ahead with delivery and put the baby in a bucket in the corner of the room. The baby tried to breathe, and tried to cry, and everyone in the room pretended the baby wasn’t there.
But the war proponents tried desperately to continue the glorification of war by praising anyone who had been sent off to war or even just put on a uniform. Troops and veterans were placed on pedestals as great heroes – warriors who had saved us from some imagined modern-day Hitler.
My indirect exposure to war for most of my life constantly pushed me toward seeking, and becoming comfortable with, a pro-peace philosophy, as well as refusing to be intimidated by the false charges that such a position is unpatriotic, un-American, and expresses a lack of concern for military personnel.
Giving up on the ancient tradition of trusting in the god-kings for protection and sustenance is the real challenge.
We could have done with a lot less of the militarism of the 20th century. We’ll have a lot less militarism as the 21st century progresses because there will be no money to pay for it.
The problem isn’t with the choices made by central bankers. The problem is that they possess the power to make any choice at all.
As Mises wrote in 1919, “one can say without exaggeration that inflation is an indispensable means of militarism. Without it, the repercussions of war on welfare become obvious much more quickly and penetratingly; war weariness would set in much earlier.